The word “collaboration” is used with such frequency in 2016 that it wouldn’t be so strange to hear someone who’d just made a sandwich to claim they were collaborating with the bread. But Icelandic songwriter Emiliana Torrini is a genuine example of an artist who enhances her output with her partnerships: from Gypsies in Córdoba to an experimental Berlin jazz band and an Icelandic symphony orchestra in Reykjavík, and now Belgian ensemble The Colorist Orchestra. This live album of new songs and interpretations of Torrini’s catalog is a vibrant, colourful collection of classical and contemporary collisions. Serenade, from 2005, was once a delicate tightrope across a cobweb, but is now a percussive waltz, while new song When We Dance – written during an electric storm – is verdant and playful, and the stark, guitar-driven, dive-bar grime of 2008’s Gun is given an eccentric remake. The orchestra certainly elevates some aspects of her songs, but cannot replace the powerful solitude of Torrini’s solo recordings.
